Biting the hand of Project Fear

E-numbers Ali

Alistair Darling has reappeared after hiding away for a wee while because everyone thinks he’s rubbish, especially those on his own side. It must be a sobering experience to have a belief in your own abilities which is as great as the UK national deficit, only to discover that everyone else rates your worth as having less currency than trying to buy your weekly messages with two plastic Smarties lids. Plastic Smarties lids have long been abolished, along with any hopes of devo max or sensible arguments coming from Alistair Darling.

Alistair has popped up to give us a wee preview of the Treasury paper due out on Wednesday, which we’re told is going to prove just how much money the UK throws at ungrateful Scots. Allegedly we’re already spending all our Smarties lids along with most of those from everywhere else in the UK – Smarties subsidy junkies that we are – and we’ve still got rubbish public services and swingeing austerity cuts still to come. The only way we can guarantee a continuing flow of Smarties is to vote no, although we’ll only get the blue ones. They’re the ones that were banned in some countries because they contained suspicious E-numbers.

Alistair wanted to let us know that Scotland doesn’t have the Smarties for an oil fund. Almost other country in the world with significant oil resources has established an oil fund, but Scotland can’t afford to. The only other country which didn’t establish an oil fund is Iraq, which was too busy spending its oil income on invading Kuwait, oppressing Kurds, and going to war with Iran, presumably illustrating the point that you can’t establish an oil fund if you’re hell-bent on getting involved in a lot of Middle Eastern wars. So just like Westminster then.

And we’ve even got our very own version of Chemical Ali. What Scotland’s E-numbers Ali is saying is “Scotland can’t afford to become independent because me and my pals have destroyed its economy. And because we reserve the right to invade Iran too.” This is apparently a reason we’re supposed to say no to independence and give them a vote of confidence. Then we can keep letting him and his pals destroy Scotland’s economy and scoff all the Smarties. There you go, you wanted a positive case for the Union, now you’ve got one.

Alistair’s figures are based on the usual Better Together sleight of hand, and make the assumption that an independent Scotland would continue with the same spending priorities and decisions that we have at the moment under Westminster. Scotland will not be able to afford an oil fund if we keep paying for Trident and a bloated defence budget, if we continue to contribute to supposedly UK national projects like the London sewer upgrade and London Crossrail, and if we keep letting the UK Treasury classify a significant proportion of Scottish revenues – like VAT returns from Tescos in Motherwell or Bridge of Don – as originating from a company head office somewhere in England.

But this figure is based upon the supposed cost of setting up 180 ministerial departments from scratch. According to the Institute of Financial Studies, each new ministerial department will cost £15 million in initial start up costs. The UK only has 15 ministerial departments, so why Westminster thinks Scotland needs 180 is not entirely clear. Perhaps we’re so unruly we need much more governing. The figure apparently comes from the Scottish Government’s White Paper, which mentions 180 Scottish public bodies, but this figure includes organisations like the quango which manages the Cairngorms National Park. These organisations are already up and running, and would not require £15 million in order to be re-established in an independent Scotland. Scotland already possesses a number of ministerial departments, and the number of brand new ones we’re going to require would scarcely cover the bottom of a tube of Smarties.

E-numbers Ali was just copying the same trick used by George Osborne, when he ruled out a currency union with Scotland on the grounds that Scotland has a vastly inflated financial sector that’s too much of a risk. Osborne only achieved his scary figures for the financial liabilities of Scottish banks by including all the banks’ assets and debts located elsewhere in the UK – even though these would remain the responsibility of Westminster and the UK regulatory authorities after Scottish independence.

The Treasury fear bomb is ticking away, and is set to explode on Wednesday, just in time to clear the newspapers and the telly of headlines about UKIP’s gains in the European elections. But it’s already been debunked before it’s even appeared. The UK Government is now trying to backtrack, claiming that it was simply a minor clerical error. That’s what you get when you rely on the CBI for your financial scare stories.

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13 comments on “E-numbers Ali”

Brilliant, I love your analogy with smarties- E Ali’s worth equal to trying to buy weekly messages with smartie lids- once again brilliant. Thanks, we all need cheering up this weekend and your the one to do it. 😎

Of course the first thing which should occur to anyone about this treasury release is the motives and track record of the source. Its also not as if they’re entirely disinterested in the outcome of a referendum which Westminster claimed was for the the people of Scotland alone. So why spend a load of tax payers money on paper after paper telling us how hopelessly dependent we are? Really inspires feelings of fuzzy warmth to know that they rate the Scottish electorate’s contribution to UKPLC so highly.

Does this sound at all like a hands off approach to Scotland’s referendum? Does anyone believe that Westminster government has the best interests of the Scottish electorate at heart?

If the answer to those last two questions is no then file the whole thing under bin where it belongs.

Westminster yet again showing they will stoop to anything. To be caught out isn’t even embarrassing for them, what would have embarrassed them is if they hadn’t even tried. That’s democracy British style.

Is the YES campaign pulling the old ALI trick ‘rope-a-dope’?.
I bloody hope so, ‘cos all the media attention is going one way…no matter how crooked it is; Bitter Together are strangling the truth out of this “debate”.
To say I’m a wee bit scunnered by Blair’s YES tactics so far is a helluva understatement…..😨

And yet, and yet, I met someone on Saturday who had been out canvassing and was quite depressed at meeting so many No responses. One had said that they were voting No because they might lose their disability allowance in an independent Scotland.

People on WoS talk about the obduracy of the No vote and there are other doughty souls who seem to have persuaded No voters to Yes. However, It seems that out there, despite the folk going out talking to people about the case for independence that there are many still unconvinced.

It seems unbelievable that often the very people who would have their lives improved by independence are the ones still wanting to vote for the Union. I hope for their sake, that the message gets through before the vote.

Pacific Quay is going to be busy this week. They have a shiny new treasury report to play with. And it looking like they will have a big UKIP stick to beat us with. 😦

On the bright side have you seen the nick of our latest MEP Mr Coburn? I have seen him on TV he is an arrogant, pompous, loathsome cratur. But those attributes seem to be a prerequisite for UKIP membership anyway. Maybe he will wake a few folk up.